Dolph Ziggler Says He’s Not Afraid To Speak Out Backstage

Dolph Ziggler appeared on Between The Ropes with Brian Fritz (interview available at BetweenTheRopes.com) to discuss this coming Monday’s 1000th episode Raw, his favorite moments on the show, his strive for perfection, whether he is impatient when it comes to being a world champion and more. Highlights from the interview are as follows:

Whether or not he has been satisfied with a match: “(laughs) Honestly, nothing off the top of my head has me satisfied. I’ve come backstage a couple of times and said ‘OK, that was pretty good’ but I’ve never been fully, 100% satisfied with anything. That’s just something that always drives me to want to be better than everyone else. I don’t want to be a 20-time WWE Champion. I want to be the best ever and that drives me every single day.”

What stands out as his favorite Raw memory involving himself: “I’ve had several … my first match as Dolph Ziggler on Raw I had against Batista and I didn’t know if I was going to get chewed up and spit out or be one of the mainstay guys. We ended up having a hell of a match and we went back and forth and I said ‘OK, I can hang with these guys, back to square one and start working on everything I can’. That was a huge thing for me, to come back to the roster after being gone for a while and be able to hang with the top guys in the business and say ‘OK, I’m going to learn from these guys and make myself better’.”

What Raw era he would have liked to be a part of not counting the current one: “I know a lot of fans say the Attitude Era. I enjoyed watching that but I’m more of an old-school, classic guy. I try and live my life like a throwback to some of the legends like early Curt Hennig, Mr. Perfect. I like the ’80s. Not just because it was such a huge influence on my childhood — and that’s when I started watching when I was five years old — but those guys were larger than life stars and they were always doing something cool.”

Whether or not he is impatient when it comes to being his time and becoming a world champion: “Of course I do. I’m never satisfied. I’m never happy. I could be the World Champion, I could beat everyone on this roster and steal the show every single night and I would never be satisfied with the position that I’m in. It’s frustrating. They are so many superstars and there are only so many minutes of time each week on WWE programming whether it’s Monday night on Raw or Friday night on Smackdown.

“Either way, I’ve always found that I’ve kept at it. I’ve made myself vocal backstage. I stood up for what I believe in and if I thought something didn’t make sense, I said something about it. It’s not something you can just walk in and start doing. But if you’ve earned some respect from your peers, if you’ve earned it from a legend, you’re able to speak your mind if you see something that’s wrong. And I thought I need to be in a better position to help the WWE. I need to be in a higher spot on the card. I’m that good at my job and slowly but surely, one way or another, it’s a little slower that I would have liked but everything I’ve done is paying off right now.”